book s book ‘Writing is just like being pursued by a shark. You move forward or you die.’ Passion, envy, jealousy and obsession. Best-selling novelist Val McDermids first collection of short stories draws on loves darkest consequences. She discusses her delicately-crafted tales of death with Tamzin Lewis. amous for her crime fiction, prose in the short story. So I was left the one-liner as opposed to a Val McDermid’s currency is in thinking, ‘all these bloody years I stand-up comic routine.” corpses. Poisoned, have crafted these sentences and Short stories provide ways for electrocuted, bludgeoned, no bugger has noticed’.” Val to exercise different voices. The and stabbed; Val’s bodies Like many crime novelists, Val Writing on the Wall is told through Fstack up like bullion in the bank. Short feels that her prose style is often conversations scrawled on a toilet story collection Stranded rewards overlooked, as her books are wall. Keeping on the Right Side of Biography readers with murder in bite-sized chunks. classed by the literary the Law is written in the vernacular But these killings are in no sense establishment as “genre fiction”. of a Manchester criminal. Val , left, describes herself as a gratuitous. Stranded’s stories are deeply She jokes that rather than dividing “Some narrators couldn’t sustain ‘working class kid come emotional. books into sci-fi, horror, romance a novel. Others, you wouldn’t want good’. She grew up in Fife Val says: “Death and murder are part of and crime, novels should be in your head for the length of time it and, like Gordon Brown, was our lives. And we should inevitably have classed as “good” or “bad”. takes to write a novel. Some are part of an educational an emotional response. Responding to She says: “Because of the quite unpleasant characters.” experiment to hot-house murderers with distaste and distance nature of the crime novel, people And while her stories may not talented children at Kirkcaldy doesn’t take us further forward as human don’t read them for the prose. It is stem from real-life anecdotes, Val’s High School. Val was beings or as social beings. a case of the artist concealing the voices are inspired by the way in accepted into Oxford at the “It is easy and lazy to dismiss people art. This is true of a lot of crime which people structure narrative, use age of 16 to read English. who commit criminal acts or terrible fiction authors; you tend not to notice expressions or explain themselves. Of her background she emotional acts as evil monsters. The the prose as you are drawn into the Love bites: Val She says: “These voices form an orderly says: “I am not suddenly attitude of ‘we can’t do anything about it’ s t o r y. ” M c D e r m i d ’s queue in the back of my head waiting for a going to reveal that it was all a lets us all of the hook. I am interested in Stranded’s foreword is written by fellow collection of story to tell. There is a constant flood of pack of lies and actually I writing about humanity and compassion. Scottish crime-writer and good friend Ian short stories stories in the back of my head for novel- spent my teenage years as an Itryandunderstand whypeopledothe Rankin, who notes that the short story shows us the length fiction, but short stories are a more exotic dancer in Kuala things they do.” form suits Val, “allowing her to pick apart darker sides L u m p u r. ” of passion. difficult gift for me to come by.” In Stranded, often the reason people relationships with a furious skill, Val also feels that she learns more from She worked as a journalist do the things they do is for love. The highlighting flaws and jealousies”. It does writing novels than short stories. “For each in Glasgow and Manchester stories embrace sexual betrayal, violence suit her, but short story writing has not novel I come away thinking I have learnt for 16 years and published her in relationships, lesbian, straight and come easily, which makes this collection a something about the process of narrative first novel Report for Murder in cyber-sex. Val, who lives in Alnmouth, one-off. For one book of stories, she has and the way I develop character. The novel 1987. Her 20th will be says: “Any powerful emotion has the written 19 novels and a non-fiction work is constantly a process of trying to make published in 2006. potential to be both positive and over a career spanning 18 years. each book better, based on the mistakes Her string of awards negative. As the most powerful emotion, Val says: “When I started with fiction, it of the last one. I feel less that way about includes the Crime Writers’ love can be transformed into hate, was the novel that I wanted to write, and it the short story,” she says. “The challenge Association Gold Dagger violence, envy, jealousy. These are the took me a long time to get there with short of trying to make it better is what makes Award for Best Crime Novel of perverted states of love. Much of the stories. I could sense whether a story was me carry on writing. the Year in 1995. It was for harm we do to one another has a starting good or not. But from the writing point of “Writing is just like being pursued by a The Mermaids Singing, which point in love.” view, I couldn’t really figure out how to shark. You move forward or you die. I have introduced clinical This collection draws together stories make a short story work. Possible short seen a lot of writers with great energy get psychologist Tony Hill. Val previously published online, in stories ended up being sub-plots in books. bogged down and write the same book gained a TV audience with magazines or written for radio. The It took me a while before I realised I had got again and again.” ITV’s Wire in the Blood, standout story is The Road and the Miles it, but it may just have been practice.” Manchester PI Kate Brannigan, who starring Robson Green and to Dundee, a new commission for New Val cites favourite short story writers as Hard wired: appears in six of Val’s crime novels, also Hermione Norris. Writing North. Intensely personal, it is the Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Ruth Robson crops up in a Stranded story. “It is great first time Val has ever directly written Rendell, Katherine Mansfield, Flannery Green and working with a character you know so well about her father and her roots. O’Connor, Anton Chekhov and O. Henry. Hermione as the story is shaped by how they talk, “The commission was liberating as I She argues that the short story is usually Norris in Wire how they act, how they are.” could do whatever I wanted, outside of one of two breeds. “It is either a in the Blood. Val is writing her 20th novel, a what people would normally expect. I snapshot of a moment with a crux, psychological thriller with its roots in the had written about my relationship with or a straightforward idea with a 18th Century, linking the mutiny on The my father in other contexts, translating twist in the tail which ends up in Bounty with an undiscovered and transforming it, so it would never be an unexpected place. It has to manuscript by William Wordsworth. obvious,” Val explains. “I read the story at have something at its heart which She promises bodies: old and new. an event and people told me how they grabs the reader and makes ❊ Stranded is launched on June 9 at had read my books for years, but they them stop and think. 6pm at Newcastle’s Literary and JUNE 05 JUNE 05 had never noticed my prose style before, The short story Philosophical Society. It is JUNE 05 because they were so excited about the requires a writer to published by Northumberland’s story and characters. I take no less care tell it as concisely Flambard Press, £7.99. over sentences in the novels as with the as possible. It is w w w. f l a m b a rd p re s s . c o . u k culture culture culture culture c u l t u re u t l u c 8 9.